Daily Brief

August nonfarm payrolls rose by 162,000. The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the data at 8:30 a.m. ET (3:30 p.m. in Istanbul); the LSEG consensus was around 55,000, so the print came in near three times forecast. The unemployment rate held at 4.1%, and average hourly earnings rose 0.3% on the month to $37.75, up 3.1% from a year earlier. The revisions did as much work as the headline: July was flipped from a 23,000 loss to a 21,000 gain, and June went from 20,000 to 31,000. Most of the August gain came from food services and drinking places (59,000) and local government education (42,000), while the information sector shed 23,000 jobs.

The print reopened the Fed debate. Odds of a September hike had climbed to 63% after Chair Kevin Warsh's hawkish Jackson Hole address, then fell to 54% when Governor Christopher Waller said he was inclined to hold rates steady as long as disinflation continued; pricing moved back to roughly 50% after the report. The policy rate currently sits at 3.50%-3.75%. Futures diverged premarket, with Nasdaq 100 contracts higher and Dow contracts lower, and the dollar index is on track to end the week 0.7% down.

Nvidia is buying Hugging Face for $12.93 billion. The company confirmed the deal on Thursday, taking control of the largest distribution platform for open-source AI models and saying the platform will stay open to AMD and other hardware.

Oil is headed for a weekly gain on Iran tensions but eased premarket. WTI fell 0.82% to $90.55 and Brent fell 0.50% to $95.04. Gulf tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz is running below its 10-day average, US diesel prices hit a record, and South Korea said it is reviewing military options for the strait.

Earnings released after Thursday's close (September 3):

01Lululemon: EPS $2.06 (estimate $1.83), revenue $2.42B (estimate $2.51B). The company cut its full-year guidance and the stock is down 20% premarket.

02Samsara: EPS $0.20 (estimate $0.16), revenue $508.4M (estimate $488.1M).

Ciena, which reported before Thursday's open, posted a record quarter with revenue up 37% year over year and backlog at $8.5B, yet the stock fell 10% to $320.38.

Reporting today: six companies are on the calendar and all are small caps; there is no large name worth tracking either premarket or after hours. The jobs report was the only data item on the schedule, and it has now been released.

Indexes in the last session (September 3): SPY gained 1.05%, QQQ 1.19%, DIA 1.19% and IWM 0.40%. Waller's remarks and the 10-year Treasury yield easing to 4.73% carried the session; today's payrolls figure undercuts that argument. Overnight in Asia, the Nikkei rose 0.6% to 64,622, the Hang Seng added 2.1% to 25,751 and the Shanghai Composite gained 0.8% to 3,973.

What's next: Today closes the week. The next item is August CPI and core CPI on Friday, September 11 at 8:30 a.m. ET (3:30 p.m. in Istanbul); in July, headline CPI ran at 3.30% year over year and core CPI at 2.47%.